The Buzz

Published 6:27 pm, Saturday, July 18, 2015

Kind of Quirky

You've got to wonder if officials in Schenectady were just too much in love with Ben Kaufman and Quirky when the New York City consumer products invention company announced last year it was putting a call center downtown in exchange for nearly $1 million in financial incentives.

Or maybe things at Quirky just went downhill after that and no one could see it coming.

But if you listen to Kaufman, the whole direction of Quirky took a turn for the worse right around the time of the Schenectady announcement as Quirky was launching its new $300 Aros air conditioner. He said selling Aros through large retailers was too costly.

"We were making a thin amount of gross margin, and then we had a not so thin amount of expenses associated with that," Kaufman said last week at a tech conference in Aspen, Colo. "That was one of the big problems."

The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., has redecorated a van with imagery suggesting one of the Van Gogh paintings now on exhibit at the museum.

The van shuttles attendees between buildings and parking lots, where they can see not only "Van Gogh and Nature," in the main building, but also "Whistler's Mother," visiting the museum's Stone Hill Center from Paris.

From the Stone Hill Center, you can catch a van to go to Van Gogh.

Big dreams

The USS Slater, the World War II destroyer escort that is docked in the port of Albany, has gotten a $1.3 million makeover in recent years, and we hear that some of the World War II veterans that cherish the ship would like to see one more major investment.

There are some who would like the ship to be able to make trips on its own someday — to be able to take voyages without the aid of tugboats. The old sailors would love to be able to do that one last time, we hear.